How Many Times Can You Stack A Lego Brick Before It Stops Connecting?

The moulds used to create plastic Lego pieces are engineered with extreme precision so that the bricks stay connected via friction alone. But your Lego pieces will wear out over time with use and eventually stop sticking. Phillipe Cantin wanted to know exactly when that would happen.

So he built a small machine designed to stress test a pair of six-stud Lego bricks, repeatedly assembling and disassembling them until they no longer held together on their own. After 10 full days of testing, it turns out the magic number was 37,112 attempts — which is amazing. Of course that number will certainly vary from piece to piece, but it’s good to know your Lego collection can endure more playtime than you can probably throw at it in a lifetime. [Phillipe Cantin via Arduino Blog via Make]

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It's not valid. To begin with look at the pitch of the dropping bracket - You're not getting equal wear and tear on all of the studs and sockets, all you are doing is repeatedly assaulting one particular angle until the studs and sockets break down enough to make this look like science.

I wonder at what point was it determined that the bricks no longer connected.
It's not something that would have spontaneously occurred.
There will be a continual decline in connect ability happening right from the very first connection.
So, at what point is it determined that the connection is no longer solid?
It's not like they're going to connect perfectly then, all of a sudden at 37,112 attempts, simply fail.
Also, the bricks will last longer or not depending on the specifics of the testing rig being used.

Go watch Megafactories: LEGO.
It shows the QA department and how they test the block.
They have a machine that does something similar but it also measures the force required to pull blocks apart. It's to make sure that small children have enough strength to disassemble the blocks.

The tolerances for all the lego specs are amazingly tight.
Megafactories: LEGO is still my favourite doco.